Board of Directors
Unicon’s Board of Directors is highly involved in supporting the management team and the company’s strategic direction. The Board consists of: Harold Schifman, Dr. William Lewis, Robert Bowen, Chris Franz, and John Blakley. The statutory Board is responsible for the overview of all company operations, including detailed review of the annual financial audit as well as the strategic direction of the company and the performance of the CEO.
The Board formally meets each quarter and is presented an in-depth review of all aspects of the company, from detailed financials to current market situations and company reactions. The Board is composed of a very diverse group of highly experienced members, 4 members from outside the company, 2 representing the internal management team. The background of the members varies from the former CIO of Arizona State University, to the Chairman and CEO of a reading and comprehension company focused on the K-12 space.
Harold A. Schifman
Harold Schifman has spent the majority of his professional life in either the consulting arena or serving as CEO/COO for a variety of companies across many industries. After selling his last company to a Forbes 400 family, he took the interim position of COO of SHR Perceptual Management, an internationally recognized brand development firm, prior to forming Delta Source Group, a private equity firm, and subsequently Crossroads Executive Forums. Leveraging deep ties within the Arizona business community and a trusted partnership orientation founded on parallel interest, Crossroads Executive Forums provides small and mid-sized businesses access to the leadership, strategy, management, and capital necessary to further their personal and professional objectives.
From 1987 to November 1999, Schifman served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Larson Company. The Larson Company gained the reputation as the global leader in the design and building of naturalistic and themed environments for both the commercial and institutional markets. Schifman purchased the company of 25 employees producing $3 million dollars in sales in 1987 and grew the enterprise to 450 employee’s worldwide reaching volumes in excess of $45 million dollars. Schifman has a blend of both hands on business experience and a formal fine arts education. This combination of skills helped build the highly complex organization composed of designers, architects, engineers, project managers, manufacturing technicians, and construction crews. Fostering an environment allowing Larson teams to work in concert, produced successful design and build services for many of the world’s largest and most well known zoos, aquariums, theme parks, casinos, resorts, and shopping centers. He was also responsible for setting up many successful international marketing and joint ventures for Larson including establishing manufacturing plants in both Mexico and Asia. Schifman received the “Outstanding Exporter of the Year” award from the Arizona Department of Commerce in 1994 and the Ministry of International Trade (MITI) award in Japan in 1990.
Schifman moved to Tucson in 1985 and for two years led venture capital interest as the managing partner responsible for the acquisition, operation and the sale of a fast food franchise, a Chrysler automobile dealership, a construction and material distributor, a telecommunication company, and various real estate projects.
Schifman was founder and CEO of the Ibis Company from 1969 to 1985. The Ibis Company, a Kansas City\Boston based consulting firm consisting of 26 professionals provided strategy, marketing, and business planning services to Fortune 500 companies. Major clients included; Ecolabs, Land O Lakes, Coca Cola, Ralston Purina, Kraft, Upjohn Pharmaceutical and the American Dairy Association. The Ibis Company was listed in ‘Marketing Magazine” as in the “top 10” marketing consulting firms in the Midwest.
Prior to 1969 Schifman spent two years working with Silberger and Company, an east coast investment banking firm. The firm provided ground up experience and participation in three public offerings. Schifman joined MEDCO an American Stock Exchange company in 1966 as director of marketing and advertising. MEDCO operated 200 leased department operations in major retail stores across the US with annual sales of $90 million dollars.
For over a decade Schifman served on the boards of the University of Arizona’s College of Business and Public Administration and the College of Medicine, Sarver Heart Center. Additionally, Schifman is an honorary fellow of the Karl Eller Graduate School of Management and founder of Crossroads Executive Forums.
A sample of current local Arizona fiduciary and advisory boards include: Unicon, designs, develops, licenses, and supports innovative technology for the Cisco Learning Institute and the e-learning market; World Communications Center, providing satellite communication products and services via the Iridium network; CRESA Partners, an international industrial real estate consultancy firm; Health II, an investment and management group specializing in acquisition and turnarounds of home health companies. Beck Group, an international commercial general contractor providing a variety of construction services, Empro, specializing in outsourcing of employees and payroll services, Techniquex, the U.S. largest industrial epoxy floor coating company, and NESCO, a manufacturer of high density foam architectural elements.
William E. Lewis
Chief Information Officer/Vice Provost
Professor
William E. Lewis is a Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at ASU. Lewis received his B.S. in Industrial Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University in 1962. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University in 1964 and 1966, respectively.
Lewis came to ASU in 1965 as an assistant professor of Industrial Engineering. In 1980, he became the founding chair of the CSE department and was elevated to professor in 1981. He served as Chair of CSE until 1985 when he accepted a position of assistant dean and later associate dean in the school. In 1992, he served as interim director for Academic and Communications Technology. In 1993, he became the Vice Provost for Information Technology. In 2003, he was elevated to the Chief Information Officer and Vice Provost of ASU.
Lewis’s industry experience includes work at Intel Corporation, Honeywell Information Systems, and the General Electric Company in Phoenix, Arizona. He currently serves as a consultant for the Secretary of State’s Voting Tabulation System, is on the Board of Directors of UNICON, and is involved in expert witness activity. He has previously served as a consultant for Good Samaritan Hospital, the City of Tempe, General Electric Company, the MEAS Project in Colorado, Honeywell, Central Arizona Health Systems Agency, Tempe Elementary School District, Mountain Bell, Delphi Associates, Tempe Union High School District, Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, the University of Utah and East Carolina University.
Lewis’s principal research interests include computer science, operations research, performance evaluation and advanced systems concepts, intra and inter-nets, and client/server computing. He is a member of UPE (Computer Science Honor Society), Alpha Pi Mu (Industrial Engineering Honor Society), Sigma Xi (Science Honor Society) and Tau Beta Pi (Engineering Honor Society).
Robert C. Bowen
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Scientific Learning Corp.
Mr. Bowen brings more than three decades of consistent success in building market leadership and shareholder value in the education market. He served as senior vice president and an officer of National Computer Systems (NCS). In his last assignment as president of NCS Education Software and Services, he built this K-12 business into the market leader of enterprise software solutions with a 40 percent market share. NCS was sold to Pearson PLC in the fall of 2000. Most recently, Mr. Bowen has served as a strategic consultant to leading providers of instructional and administrative technology solutions in education.
Mr. Bowen has also held senior executive positions with other leading education companies including seventeen years with McGraw-Hill. He last served as executive vice president of McGraw-Hill's Education and Training group, which included seven divisions with total revenues of approximately $350 million. Early in his career, Mr. Bowen was a high school math teacher, a coach, and a school district administrator.
